Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism in America - Historical Analysis & Political Studies - Perfect for Academic Research & American History Discussions

This edited collection of essays addresses the question of what is fascism and whether it has or it can occur in the United States from a variety of perspectives. It brings together in one volume of the thinking of older and more recent writers on the subject, including Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Sarah Churchwell, and many others. (You’ll find brief biographies in an appendix.)Readers concerned about the current state of American politics (and who here couldn’t be) will learn about the origins of fascism, the meaning of the system and how difficult it seems to be defining it in American terms, and how Trump and Trumpism fit the mould of our understanding of traditional fascism and how it has manifested in America in the past and how it might look in the present and future.Readers will find some of the essays clearer than others, but the best for many Americans appears in Part III, “Is Fascism as American as Apple Pie?” In her contribution, “American Fascism,” Sarah Churchwell provides a concise and fairly thorough history of fascist movements between the two world wars and how they might appear again in the Trump age.This paragraph, one among many quotable in this volume, from “American Fascism” stands out as a warning to Americans in this election season: “American fascist energies today are different from 1930s European fascism, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fascist; it means they’re not European and it’s not the 1930s. They remain organized around classic fascist tropes of nostalgic regeneration, fantasies of racial purity, celebration of authentic folk and nullification of others, scapegoating groups for economic instability or inequality, rejecting the legitimacy of political opponents, the demonization of critics, attacks on a free press, and claims that the will of the people justifies violent imposition of military force. Vestiges of interwar fascism have been dredged up, dressed up, and repurposed for modern times. Colored shirts might not sell anymore, but colored hats are doing great.”This is an important, thoughtful alert for those who will listen.